Part 24 (1/2)

The crowd laughed, and some one shouted: ”Good for you, Reub!”

Camp continued: ”But our friend here will shake the hand of any man, woman, or child that wants to speak to him; and you needn't wipe it on the gra.s.s first, either. He's a _man_! And I want to say that he's going to spend the next week with us, at my mother's house, and we shall be glad to have you call.”

The crowd, the rustic and ruder part of it, cheered and cheered till the mountain echoes answered; then a railroader called for three times three, with a tiger, and got it. The guests of the hotel broke away and went toward the house over the long shadows of the meadow. The lower cla.s.ses pressed forward, on Camp's invitation.

”Well, did you ever hear a more disgusting rigmarole?” asked Mrs. Makely, as our little group halted indecisively about her.

”With all those imaginary commonwealths to draw upon, from Plato, through More, Bacon, and Campanella, down to Bellamy and Morris, he has constructed the shakiest effigy ever made of old clothes stuffed with straw,” said the professor.

The manufacturer was silent. The banker said: ”I don't know. He grappled pretty boldly with your insinuations. That frank declaration that Altruria was all these pretty soap-bubble worlds solidified was rather fine.”

”It was splendid!” cried Mrs. Makely. The lawyer and the minister came toward us from where they had been sitting together. She called out to them: ”Why in the world didn't one of your gentlemen get up and propose a vote of thanks?”

”The difficulty with me is,” continued the banker, ”that he has rendered Altruria incredible. I have no doubt that he is an Altrurian, but I doubt very much if he comes from anywhere in particular, and I find this quite a blow, for we had got Altruria nicely located on the map, and were beginning to get accounts of it in the newspapers.”

”Yes, that is just exactly the way I feel about it,” sighed Mrs. Makely.

”But still, don't you think there ought to have been a vote of thanks, Mr.

Bullion?”

”Why, certainly. The fellow was immensely amusing, and you must have got a lot of money by him. It was an oversight not to make him a formal acknowledgment of some kind. If we offered him money, he would have to leave it all behind him here when he went home to Altruria.”

”Just as _we_ do when we go to heaven,” I suggested; the banker did not answer, and I instantly felt that in the presence of the minister my remark was out of taste.

”Well, then, don't you think,” said Mrs. Makely, who had a leathery insensibility to everything but the purpose possessing her, ”that we ought at least to go and say something to him personally?”

”Yes, I think we ought,” said the banker, and we all walked up to where the Altrurian stood, still thickly surrounded by the lower cla.s.ses, who were shaking hands with him and getting in a word with him now and then.

One of the construction gang said, carelessly: ”No all-rail route to Altruria, I suppose?”

”No,” answered h.o.m.os, ”it's a far sea voyage.”

”Well, I shouldn't mind working my pa.s.sage, if you think they'd let me stay after I got there.”

”Ah, you mustn't go to Altruria. You must let Altruria come to _you_”

returned h.o.m.os, with that confounded smile of his that always won my heart.

”Yes,” shouted Reuben Camp, whose thin face was red with excitement, ”that's the word. Have Altruria right here, and right now.”

The old farmer, who had several times spoken, cackled out: ”I didn't know, one while, when you was talk'n' about not havin' no money, but what some on us had had Altrury here for quite a spell, already. I don't pa.s.s more'n fifty dolla's through my hands most years.”